Deny MERALCO’s P1.9-trillion ‘dirty deal’

The Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) joins consumers, activists, and scientists today in a protest against the P1.9-trillion MERALCO dirty deal.

MERALCO's midnight deals aim to establish seven new coal-fired power plants that will lock-in the country to dirty, climate change-inducing energy. This is the single biggest coal coup in the power industry in recent years.

The MERALCO coal projects amount to an estimated 9.7 million metric tons of annual coal consumption, and equivalent to 3,551 megawatts of annual power production. This is estimated to produce an annual output of 739,791.3 tons of coal ash, 1.1 million tons of sludge waste, and 20.7 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Imagine all that waste finding its way into our drinking water, crops, homes, and the very air we breathe. Imagine stockpiles of pulverized coal dumped on open-air expanses, with winds dispersing the dangerous particulates into the ecosystems and communities adjacent to these new coal power plants about to be locked in.

We are in a time of clean and renewable energy alternatives rapidly becoming cheaper and more accessible than what was once known as the cheapest (but dirtiest) source of energy. We are in a time of deep and drastic carbon emission cuts are urgent imperatives.

MERALCO's dirty deal does not belong in these times and must be denied by the Duterte government. We do not need more pollution, more expensive power rates, and more climate disruption.

If the Duterte regime and its bureaucrat-oligarchs in the Department of Energy will push through with this dirty deal, the Filipino people will make sure it becomes a dead deal. There will be barricades, blockades, and general strikes across all the sites where MERALCO intends to build its new power plants.

Expect 'People Power' where power will not benefit the Filipino people.#

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